One-on-one and peer supervision at the Jesuit Spirituality Center in Wernersville, PA

View of West Portico Jesuit Center

Beginnings

Father Schemel: It doesn’t feel right to close the novitiate.

Father Connor: I agree.

Father Schemel: What if we convert part of it to a spiritual center?

Father Connor: What’s a spiritual center?

Father Schemel: I don’t know, ask me again in two years.

About the same time that William Barry, SJ and his colleagues were opening the Center for Religious Development (CRD) in Cambridge, MA, George Schemel, SJ asked James Connor, SJ, his Provincial in the Maryland Province about converting part of the Jesuit Novitiate in Wernersville, PA to a spiritual center. As the story is told,[1] they spoke at a coffee break to decide the fate of the then 40-year-old novitiate. Completed in 1930, the spacious four-story building with its echoing limestone and marble-lined halls, its gorgeous chapel and 200-acre campus, had seen enrollment dwindle through the 1950’s and 60’s and its future was uncertain.

View of chapel as seen from 3rd floor balcony

​A 1952 graduate of the University of Scranton with a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics, Schemel held M.A and Ph.L. degrees from Fordham University, and received training in theology at Woodstock College in Maryland and the Gregorian University in Rome.[2] Most important for this narrative, he did his tertianship[3] with Paul Kennedy, SJ at St. Bueno’s in Wales. Kennedy was one of the pioneers in returning to the one-on-one Spiritual Exercises originally practiced by Ignatius of Loyola and his early followers.[4] This was a dramatic step away from group-centered preached retreats[5] developed in the early 20th century.[6]

Barry and his colleagues at CRD chose to focus on spiritual direction. In contrast, Schemel, along with John English, SJ and David Asselin, SJ at the St. Ignatius Retreat Center in Guelph, Ontario and David Fleming, SJ at St. Louis University,[7] focused on the Spiritual Exercises in directed retreats.

Jesuit Center, as viewed from the west

​In light of the challenges offered by Vatican II to “go back to your roots and find your charisms,” religious communities across the United States began re-exploring their history. Some sense of this change can be felt in this article by Elizabeth Liebert, SNJM:

I am a Roman Catholic religious sister who began her journey in religious life just prior to the heady breath of Vatican II-generated fresh air that rattled the convent walls. Spiritual direction, required of everyone in formation, adhered very much to an institutional model. We were required to speak about our lives monthly with the superior of our particular stage of formation. I found these sessions torturous: if I said the wrong thing, or appeared to have too many doubts and struggles, I was sure I would be asked to leave. Not an auspicious foundation for experiencing the liberty of a daughter of God!

As I was getting my feet wet in teaching, an innovation appeared on the horizon: the (one-on-one) directed retreat. Along with the directed retreat came new ways of praying, new in that they began to flow from one’s own personal predilections in prayer, at least under the encouragement of a good director. These first directed retreats were a reclamation of Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, and very shortly became a seedbed for training a whole cadre of spiritual directors who burst the boundaries of the ministry.[8]

At the time, there were not many ways to learn about discernment. Kathryn Fitzgerald, an early intern the in Wernersville program, told a story of Schemel being called to Rome for a meeting to discuss how to develop discernment skills in religious communities. At the meeting, Schemel explained how he had already given a number of discernment workshops. The response from the officials in Rome was “Father, you actually do this?” Yes, he and others did. The staff at Wernersville offered workshops in Wernersville and in communities in the Northeastern United States.

While discernment workshops[9] were important, from its beginning on the Feast Day of St. Francis (Oct 3rd, 1971), the Jesuit Center at Wernersville focused on offering the Spiritual Exercises as the source of understanding about discernment. While the Center for Religious Development (CRD) in Cambridge focused on training directors for monthly spiritual direction, the highest priority at Wernersville in the 1970’s, was training directors to offer retreats in the Ignatian tradition, particularly the Spiritual Exercises.[10]

Retreat director training

The Jesuit Center at Wernersville was busy from its beginning. Their first 30-day retreats were offered in the Summer of 1972. Kathryn Fitzgerald made her 30-day retreat there in 1974 in a group of about 60 men and women, all Roman Catholic religious participating in a 6-week program for spiritual directors and formatorsInitially Schemel and Roemer worked with George Kreiger, SJ and Henry Haske, SJ. While they were on the staff of the novitiate at the time, George William SJ and George Aschenbrenner SJ[11] also directed retreats and taught discernment workshops in the early years of the Center.

While preached retreats needed only one director for even a large group, returning to the tradition of one-on-one retreats required many more directors. To meet the need for more directors at Wernersville, the staff invited some of those completing 30-day retreats to join an internship program All had made a novitiate and received a college education, in addition to their experience with Ignatian spirituality.

Interns like Kathryn Fitzgerald were immersed immediately in the experience of giving retreats starting with weekend 2-day retreats. As part of their training program, they were required to offer 12-15 weekend retreats. From this initial pool of interns, some were invited to give two or three 8-day retreats with daily supervision usually covering the 1st week of the Spiritual Exercises. Out of that second group, a few were invited to give two full 30-day retreats. Like at CRD, intern directors lived at Wernersville for all retreats.

Supervision during training

From the start of the Jesuit Center internship program, one-on-one supervision in the form of mentoring on how to give the Exercises[12] was an integral part of the training. During retreats, interns met with a staff person each day to review their experience with retreatants, reviewing retreatants’ engagement with the discernment process, and their faithfulness to the Exercises. For the 8- and 30-day retreats, interns were exposed to three or four different supervisors. This gave the intern exposure to different supervision methods and provided the staff with three perspectives of an intern’s experience as retreat director.

Together supervisor and director would examine how the retreatant was deepening their relationship with God and discerning how to live daily and community life authentically. Details the content of these discussions can be found in a 1975 article[13] on discernment in spiritual directors by Roemer. She describes seven elements of discernment for a spiritual director in the context of retreat direction. These are:

Maintaining an attitude and atmosphere of faith within the interview– this included being drawn into life with God as one accompanies another person in her/his process towards God, living with people who are learning what it means to love and to forgive, and submitting oneself to spiritual direction and as a member of a periodic group supervision.

Consistent and deep prayer –prayer is needed to provide the clarity to be saved from one’s own blindness, remembering one is not the Messiah or Savior of the person being directed but rather an instrument of God. One also needs to pray for the person being directed and to ask God for the grace to share appropriately out of one’s own experience. Giving the Exercises is not just handing the directee something from a book but something from a real life situation helping the retreatant see that directors struggle in prayer and that the experience of prayer is not the same for everyone.

Recognition of one’s own sinfulness: hang ups, addictions, and personal lack of freedom – Each director needs to recognize and recall patterns that interfere with direction. These include difficulty distinguishing between needs of director and retreatant; being unprepared physically and psychologically having false expectations, countertransference, imposing personal causes on a retreatant, being helpful, and wanting results from each session.

Trying to maintain freedom and indifference – Freedom and indifference might include a) letting God deal with the retreatant, b) not feeling one’s life and status depend on the directee’s success in the Exercises, c) freedom from having a prescribed sense of what is going to happen in an interview, and d) freedom from awe of a retreatant whose faith experience and dedication may be far beyond one’s own.

A grounding in facts – A director needs to know their own faith tradition, its theology and prayer practices. Directors who lack the basic content of faith such as the divinity of Jesus, the reality of sin and sinfulness, the three-ness of the Trinity, presents a difficulty, even an obstacle to serious direction.

Looking at something from both sides – This involves deeply listening to what is being said in the retreatant’s framework, bringing it back into oneself and listening to the thinking and feeling response of one’s own organism to that information.

Confirmation of discernment – internal and external confirmation of what was decided, a sense of peace and joy and rightness about what is being decided between the two, and a sense that externally a decision fits well within the context of the retreatant’s life.

Roemer is clear in the article that these seven elements were not to be addressed in supervision as a “checklist.” “Rather, discernment in a director is an art and grace and a process in which several elements interplay. All of them are ‘essential’ in various degrees, leading the director to be ‘co-operative with grace, being sensitive to persons and circumstances, being disciplined not to get in the way so that God can work with His people, being smart enough to know what I don’t know, being willing to study and learn, and growing in an ever-deeper listening to the Spirit.”[14]

In addition to one-on-one supervision, staff and interns would meet for an additional hour of class each retreat day where together they considered a spectrum of topics including Ignatian spirituality, the Spiritual Exercises, Jungian psychology, Myers-Briggs inventories, the Enneagram, and transference/counter-transference. [15] The goal, according to Schemel was to develop in the spiritual director a “sound theological matrix and a sound psychological matrix”[16] As Fitzgerald describes it, “The use of these tools was in service of fostering healthy on-going psychological development of adults which in turn would promote healthy spiritual development.”[17]

On-going education for directors and supervisors occurred as the need was uncovered. For example, many directors struggled in direction with retreatants’ dreams[18] so Jungian psychologists were brought into to discuss this.[19] Eventually William Sneck, SJ a Jungian psychologist, joining the staff in the early 1980’s. Carla Desola visited to discuss meditative dance, meditation and contemplation. Other visitors included Natalie Gannon, CND from Notre Dame Academy, English from Guelph and John Futrell, SJ from St. Louis University.[20]

Peer supervision

While one-on-one supervision was the rule at Wernersville for intern directors, the staff[21] participated in peer group supervision.[22] Schemel, Roemer and the other staff accepted supervision as part of their on-going development saving them from “becoming a guru.”[23] And while the Wernersville peer supervision process was designed to benefit the retreatant what seems distinctive is its strong emphasis on communication skills in supervision. As will be discussed below, this seems to be a direct result of training that Schemel, Roemer and other staff received at Communications Center #1 in St. Louis. [24]

For Schemel, a key goal of peer supervision was improving on “the art of making interventions[25] in a directing situation.”[26] While Schemel believed grace to be the most important reality in directing a retreat, learning how to make a “facilitative intervention”[27] followed right after it. “How I make an intervention helps me set up the atmosphere of the directing situation so that the other person can feel free, get a hold of his or her experience and issues, and be able to work with them in my presence.”[28]

Schemel describes a good intervention as “crisp,” maximizing the possibility of “bringing the conversation one step further from where it is.” He considers saying too much worse than not speaking at all. “90% of what I know, I never say; the other 10%, I say only at the right time.”[29]“When the interventions are done well, the atmosphere that is created in the interview with the director puts the retreatant at ease and allows him or her to explore the thoughts and feelings, the spontaneous movements of affectivity that have arisen during prayer. The interview is held in a non-defensive, simple, human way …that allows the Creator to deal directly with the creature.’[30]

Differing significantly from monthly spiritual direction, a second goal of a facilitative intervention with a retreatant is to move the process of the Spiritual Exercises one step further.[31] For Schemel, this was accomplished by recognizing the “spiritual matrix”[32] in an interview as “background” or what is heard from a retreatant.[33] He writes, “For instance, the retreatant is telling me something that fits in the Second Week. Therefore, I need to make an intervention so that the person will move one step further in that Week’s material. In my mind, then, I am moving the person through the Second Week and moving them toward Third Week material…”[34]

While most of the focus in the peer group would be movement through Ignatian Weeks, a presenter in group supervision might request that his or her peers reflect on another “spiritual matrix” such as “how Teresa of Avila would name it, using the Seven Mansions, or I might look for the matrix of the dark nights of St. John of the Cross.” In other sessions, a presenter might ask her or his peers to listen with “a psychological matrix.” Or the focus might be on language, requesting peers to help heighten the presenter’s awareness of how retreatants are using metaphors or images in the interview.

A key goal for peer supervision in this retreat context was an assumption is that all were there to grow. Schemel wrote, “No one comes out of peer group without learning something. It is that kind of ‘what am I going to learn today’ that becomes a necessary attitude as I enter into a session.”[35] As with current supervision practices, confidentiality was stressed as was maintaining time boundaries. Schemel found that two-hour period was sufficient to allow a group to hear two or three cases and reflect on the learnings[36]

Communications Center #1

Communication Center #1, 214 S Meramec Ave, St Louis, MO

In the summer of 1971, just before Wernersville opened, Schemel attended a 30-day communication “laboratory” in St. Louis, MO. The laboratory called Communications Center #1 (CC#1) was run by Joseph Connelly, his wife Eileen Carney Connolly, and two other facilitators who facilitated live-in, five- or thirty-day secular experiences in community aimed towards improving “personal and community communications skills”[37] using techniques and concepts developed by Carl Rogers[38] and others. [39] There Schemel met Roemer who was also attending the seminar, and he told her about Wernersville’s Jesuit Center. Eventually, he asked her to join him there.

Communications Center #1 played an important role in training the Wernersville staff. During the first year or two that the Center was open, all staff went there for further training. Later, the Connolly’s were invited to Wernersville to give 5-day programs on communications for some of the interns.[40]

Some of the skills taught and practiced at Communications Center #1 that Roemer found useful for direction and supervision included:

Communications Center #1 (CC#1) began in 1966, working with high school and college-age students but soon shifted to working with Catholic Church leaders. The workshop used techniques and concepts developed by Carl Rogers[42] and others in the 1960’s.[43]

While Roemer and Schemel attended a 30-day experience, the usual was a five-day workshop with twenty-one to twenty-four participants sorted into one of three so-called C-groups[44] of seven or eight people.[45] Each day, participants attended three, three-hour sessions of small group work.[46] While the workshop content was secular, most of the participants were priests, brothers or sisters in the Catholic Church.[47] Almost all had at least a master’s degree although a few did not.. Participants came from all over the U.S. with a small but significant number of missionaries. [48] Interestingly, while at the workshop participants were forbidden to say where they lived or their vocation.[49][50]

In the group meetings, great emphasis was placed on the “here-and-now.” As Joseph Connolly wrote[51] in his dissertation, “The process is simply ‘what am I feeling here and now in this situation; what am I feeling in regard to myself and in relation to the other, and what is the perception that goes with this feeling.’” As in peer supervision, the feelings and reactions of other C-group members to statements made by a participant were the catalyst for raising unconscious feelings to conscious awareness.

A primary goal of the sessions was to help the speaker distinguish between their perceptions, feelings and cognition. An equally important goal was to blend perception and feelings with the cognition required to express them. This second goal can best be understood by focusing on the word “express.” In contrast to “stating” something, “expressing” implied “congruence” between perception, feeling and cognition. Eileen Connolly, quoting Carl Rogers, describes congruence: [52] “When my experiencing of this

moment is present in my awareness, and when what is present in my awareness is present in my communication, then each of these three levels (perception, feeling and cognition) matches. At such moments I am integrated or whole, I am completely in one piece.”[53]

The Connolly’s five-day program was not for the faint of heart; C-group discussions were direct and even blunt. Eileen Connolly wrote, “Judgmental feedback is not waived in a Communication Workshop, but rather honest perception of the other and the related feelings were encouraged.”[54] Elsewhere she wrote “The element of threat (was) not eased in a Communication Workshop, but hopefully, the individual comes to recognize himself in threat and then moves himself on past it.”

While neither Roemer nor Schemel received direct training in supervision at Communications Center #1, in the fourth (last) week[56] of the program, Schemel and Roemer were paired with one of the staff and a few fellow participants to help co-facilitate a new group of five-day workshop attendees. Roemer believes this last week at Communications Center #1 was a solid introduction to supervision.[57] After each group session, the staff person gave feedback individually to Roemer and Schemel in the presence of other co-facilitators. This experience taught Roemer[58]

to work only with material voiced in that group within that hour (“here and now”)

that her personal insights were not the same as how she felt about something

that contravening a peer group member was not advisable

that people have uniqueness and dignity

Schemel echoes Roemer’s belief in the importance of the “here and now,” stating in his chapter on peer supervision, “We are interested, not so much in the case being presented, but rather, what is going on right here in this room at this time. Our emphasis is on these people and what they say to each other.”

Two other aspects of Communications Center #1 worked their way into Schemel’s peer supervision process: learning and practicing communications skills and an uncovering unconscious processes through feedback from others.

Communications skills – More so than current supervision practices for spiritual directors,[59] Schemel’s process focused on communications. He notes that one strength of the peer supervision process is the chance to share intervention experiences with peers, allowing them to give “compliments and criticisms.”[60] By doing so, a director can “check out his or her own communication skills,” reflecting on and possibly improving them. One might also practice interventions[61] and ask others for feedback or to share an intervention they might apply, taking time to analyze the merit of each contribution.

Unconscious processes – Another goal of Schemel’s peer supervision was eliciting underlying theological and psychological “matrices” touched as peers listen to each other. For example, Schemel writes the following:

One desired outcome for a peer group presenter is an “opportunity to sharpen some of my awareness about my own thoughts and feelings, about communication patterns that I have, and my own way of going about directing.”[62]

“Peer group helps me become clearer about the way I speak with people in the interview situation, giving me a chance to own my own thoughts, my own feelings, helping me to be up front and direct.”[63]

“Peer group is a good opportunity to experience familiar dyads and to learn something about one’s own communication patterns so that when one goes into the real directing situation, one is neither intimidated by the directee nor patronizing towards them.”[64]

The first and second bullet points echo the Rogerian desire to express rather than to state, and to have ones thoughts, feelings and perceptions be congruent.

[3] Tertianship is the final period of formation for Jesuits. During it, a Jesuit in formation will undertake an apostolic placement of teaching or service and undergo a thirty-day silent retreat using the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertianship

[6] See David Asselin, Notes on Adapting the Exercises of St. Ignatius, Review for Religious, Vol 28, #4, pp. 410-420. A good description of a preached retreat by Barry can be found in a talk by Charles L. Moutenot, S.J. entitled The Spiritual Exercises: My Experience and Where We’re Headed at http://orientations.jesuits.ca/moutenot.html

[7] At different times, Paul Kennedy was also tertian master to John English and David Asselin who developed their own program at the University of Guelph – personal communication with Kathryn Fitzgerald

[8] Elizabeth Liebert, Perspectives on the Ministry of Spiritual Direction: One Person’s View, New Theology Review, February 2003, pp. 44-56. This perspective was corroborated in a communication with Roemer.

[9] A sense of what was taught in the discernment workshops can be found in an article written by Roemer in Review for Religious titled Discernment in the Director, 34(6) 1975-1976, pp. 949-956

[10] After Schemel left the Center in 1984 to set up a program at the University of Scranton, spiritual direction training became more of the primary focus at Wernersville.

[12] The CRD group supervision based on the CPE model described in an earlier posting was not used at Wernersville in the early years. About six or seven years into the program, Kathryn Fitzgerald remembers two people coming from CRD to discuss how they did group supervision but she felt little of that was incorporated into the supervision process.

[18] It is interesting to note the topics that arise in the more intensive live-in retreat setting that would not necessarily arise in programs such as CRD focused on the practice of monthly spiritual direction.

[32] From Individuation to Discipleship, p. 114. Schemel distinguished between spiritual and psychological matrices. A spiritual matrix draws from the spiritual heritage of religious faith while a psychological matrix draws from the expertise of that discipline.

[41] See below for more info on supervision at Communications Center #1.

[42] Carl Rogers is considered one of the founders of the humanistic approach (or client-centered approach) to psychology. The C-group method used at CC#1 was derived from his Basic Encounter Group experience – see J. Connolly, p. 39

[44] A designation by Joseph Connolly which apparently is a variation on Carl Rogers’ T-group (therapy group)

[45] Eileen Carney PhD dissertation, A Measurement Study of Passively Defensive Person in Communication Workshops, United States International University, Ph.D., (1970) – Dissertation Abstracts 71-14,17, Carl Rogers was one of her thesis advisors.

[46] Other daily communications activities included input sessions providing a conceptual framework for the previous day’s experience, selected readings on current thoughts in the field of communication; and nightly summary sheets on which the participants were asked to record their day’s experience.

[51] This parallels a statement by George Schemel in his book From Individuation to Discipleship, see below.

[52] Congruence is one of the attributes Rogers believed required of a therapist that provided “necessary and sufficient conditions” that enable humans to spontaneously grow and seek fulfillment. The conditions

that define the core of his therapy are that (a) two persons are in emotional contact; (b) one of them, called the

client, is troubled; (c) the other, called the therapist, shows genuineness and congruence in the relationship; (d) the therapist experiences and displays unconditional positive regard for the client; (e) the therapist

achieves and expresses an empathic understanding of the client; and (f) the client perceives

the genuineness, positive regard, and empathy of the therapist. Create these conditions, Rogers asserted, and the client will self-actualize in his or her own self-defined directions (Moss, 1998c, pp. 41-43; Rogers,

1957). An excellent explanation of congruence can be found in an article titled Authenticity, Congruence and Transparency by Germain Lietaer ( http://www.elementsuk.com/libraryofarticles/authenticity.pdf) originally taken from chapter in D. Brazier (Ed.), Beyond Carl Rogers. (1993) London: Constable.

[53] As an aside, this explanation of congruence feels like a more useful response to a directee or retreatant who is “in their head.” An exploration of the experience of “completely in one piece” might serve as a useful contrast.

[55] This was not the only supervision training that Roemer received. In the early 80’s, she and Fitzgerald trained with Dr. Larry Maude at the Lehigh Pastoral Counseling Center in Bethlehem, PA where the focus was keeping an intervention “short and sweet: letting the person know that he/she has been heard and take the process one step further.” She notes that Ignatius has a similar guideline about keeping the points for prayer short so that the retreatant may have his/her own insights.

]]>https://togetherinthemystery.org/blog/milestones-the-jesuit-spirituality-center-wernersville-pa-1972-present.html/feed0Milestones: The Center for Religious Development (1971 – 2009)https://togetherinthemystery.org/blog/milestones-the-center-for-religious-development-1971-2009.html
https://togetherinthemystery.org/blog/milestones-the-center-for-religious-development-1971-2009.html#respondWed, 28 Jan 2015 19:45:01 +0000https://togetherinthemystery.org/?p=1693In an attempt to document the history of our field, we begin the Together in the Mystery history blog with a series of posts on developments in supervision training for spiritual directors between 1971 and the present. Though writing an exhaustive history is beyond the current scope of our efforts, that may come in time. For now, we begin by featuring what seem to us to be milestones – in more or less chronological order.

We assume from the outset that we will miss some important developments. Should you have a piece of the puzzle that would give us a fuller picture, we would so appreciate it if you could email us and let us know: Supervision.History@gmail.com

Let us turn now to the work of our guest blogger and collaborator, Together in the Mystery Alumnus Paul Burgmayer, who has written today about the Center for Religious Development…

Milestones in the History of Supervision for Spiritual Directors

The Center for Religious Development, Cambridge MA (1971 – 2009)

If there was a single place where supervision of spiritual direction as we know it today began, it would be the Center for Religious Development (CRD) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. William Barry, William Connolly, Robert Doherty, Daniel Lusch, Joseph McCormick, and Joseph McFarlane, all Jesuit priests, started the center in the fall of 1971.

They were a diverse group. While each[1] brought a particular gift to the Center, Barry describes Lusch and himself as those most focused on the development of supervision for spiritual directors. Barry was a practicing clinical psychologist. Lusch came with a background as a supervisor in Clinical Pastoral Education, a form of supervision for chaplains. Barry explained[2] that earlier in the 20th century a movement[3] arose in Protestant faith traditions for a formal Clinical Pastoral Education program. Within the movement, the Association of Pastoral Counselors introducing supervision based on the models developed in psychology and psychiatry.

Barry writes[4], “in the model we developed (for spiritual direction supervision), we did not focus on transference and countertransference, but referred to it and how it showed itself and advised on how to handle it. The most important factor we stressed was that supervision focused on the experience of the director while doing spiritual direction. In other words, we did supervision on an analogy with how we conceived spiritual direction. In spiritual direction the director tried to focus the conversation on the experience of the directee when he or she was trying to be or was in contact with God, was engaging in the relationship with God.”

Barry stated the CRD’s goals as threefold: 1) to do writing and study on spiritual direction in the Ignatian tradition, 2) to train spiritual directors in a 9-month program they called their Associates’ Program, and 3) to offer spiritual direction to those in the area. He wrote, “In the first year we only did the first and third, but in the following year we began the training part with something like six or so associates in training. In the years that followed we increased the number of associates to between 10 and 12 each year and also began a joint degree program with Weston Jesuit School of Theology.”

Barry described the Associates program as having rigorous prerequisites with candidates requiring some form of theological education, having completed had a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education, and already engaged in doing spiritual direction. As he described it, “We wanted… people whom others had already sought out for spiritual direction.” The requirement for some form of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) experience such as a hospital chaplaincy is one striking feature of the application process. In the book, Witnessing to the Fire, Madeline Birmingham and William Connolly note[5] that many Associates had completed this CPE experience just a few weeks before arriving at the center.

Despite the rigorous prerequisites and demanding schedule, Connolly states in an oral history[6] recorded for the New England Jesuit Oral History Project “I was amazed at the rapid response of so many to what we were offering (when the program was first offered). We soon realized there was an urgent need (for)… the program … We hoped a full nine months of intensive experience would enable them to share what they had learned and to serve others in this ministry.” In the same oral history, Connolly also noted that “Almost as soon as we opened our doors for spiritual direction, we began to see a variety of people, at first a preponderance of priests, religious and those in formation, but gradually more and more lay people …. and then non-Catholics and even non-Christians.”

The CRD founders had a strong conviction that directors needed support from other directors. “To find their way in (the world of spiritual experience) and not grow laggard in their exploration of it, they needed support from other directors who had entered it. For the first staff, the opportunity to talk frequently about their ministry with colleagues who had embarked on the same exploration was one of the most exhilarating features of their association with the Center.”[7] At CRD, this came in the form of both individual and group supervision which Birmingham and Connolly described as “a hallmark of the Associates’ program.”[8]

The method developed at CRD for spiritual direction supervision was influenced not only by the CPE supervision model but also by Barry’s experience as a clinical psychologist. In his own oral history for the New England Jesuits, Barry described[9] a long-term discernment about ways to bring together his psychological training with his religious background. This started with his PhD work at University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He tells the story of a professor at Michigan, a Jewish psychoanalyst. One of the professor’s first patients, an Orthodox Jew, told him after a few meetings that the sessions were a threat to his religion. At first the therapist interpreted the statement as resistance to the therapy. But later, when the psychoanalyst became more comfortable with his own religious background and less angry about it, he told Barry, “I realized that he (the Orthodox Jew patient) was right, that I was imposing my ideas unconsciously.” The Once he recognized this, the problem disappeared. “Now, my patients and the patients of those I supervise bring up religious topics in therapy without my prompting.”

While this story stuck with Barry, he never thought to ask himself a similar question about his own psychology practice, “None of my patients ever talk about religion. Why is that?” Even after he began practicing psychotherapy at Weston College[10] in Massachusetts with Jesuits in training for the priesthood, he still found that “no one talked to me about religion in those sessions either. I never questioned why this was so.” Until the fall of 1970, it never dawned on him that was giving the unconscious signal to his clients that “we don’t talk about religion in counseling sessions.”

While he was studying in Ann Arbor, major changes were occurring in Canada for the Jesuits and for spiritual direction. There, in the late 1960’s, David Asselin, SJ began giving the Spiritual Exercises to individuals and training others to do the same. Prior to Asselin’s work, retreats were preached[11] to groups, very different from the original Ignatian one-on-one model described in The Autobiography of St. Ignatius[12] and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola[13] themselves. They were also compressed in time from thirty days to eight days or even a weekend.

Asselin’s work led to the development of individually-directed retreats at Guelph, Ontario by John English, John Veltri and other Canadian Jesuits. ­ Dominic Marucca of the Maryland Jesuit Province, had gone to Canada to learn the one-on-one method. In the fall of 1970, he was asked to facilitate four weekend tutorials on it in North Andover, MA.

At the first meeting with Murucca, Barry made two important discoveries. First like his former professor, he realized that he unconsciously sent signals to patients not to talk about religion. And second, he realized he could integrate one-on-one retreats with psychotherapy. Barry writes[14], “The penny dropped for me when I realized that I could use the skills I had acquired to do counseling and psychotherapy to help people talk about their relationship with God. I became a more integrated Jesuit as a result, no longer a psychologist who happened to be a Jesuit, but a Jesuit with psychological training.”

Spiritual direction as we practice it today owes much to Barry’s insight. In addition, his experience points to the critical importance of supervision which directors can use to uncover unconscious biases that, influence their work with directees. In his Campion Lecture, Barry writes[15] this about how those at the CRD viewed the value of supervision:

The most important way we helped new spiritual directors to become good spiritual directors was through supervision, a practice developed in the field of psychotherapy. Supervision is different from consultation. In consultation you ask a more experienced therapist or spiritual director what he or she would do in a certain case. Your focus is on the person who came for therapy or for spiritual direction. In supervision you tell a more experienced therapist or spiritual director what happened to you as you were doing therapy or spiritual direction with another. The focus is on you and what your experience was when you were doing spiritual direction. This is very important.

The only way you can become a good therapist or spiritual director is by personal transformation, transformation from a neophyte to a professional or artist in the field. You don’t become a professional or an artist by book learning or by consultation alone. They help, but the most important way is by giving spiritual direction and by being very honest about what is happening in you as you give spiritual direction. In supervision you face your own demons, your own insecurities, your own lack of faith in God, your own resistance to getting into a more intimate friendship with God.

I believe that the introduction of supervision into the training of spiritual directors and directors of the Spiritual Exercises, after the stress on the experienced relationship with God and the contemplative stance, was the most innovative and far-reaching effect of our program at CRD. I’m not sure that this kind of supervision is what actually happens everywhere the word ‘supervision’ is used, but I do know that this kind of supervision has been truly grace-filled where it has been practiced.”

Others have also provided a detailed description of the process and goals of supervision at CRD. In the book, Witnessing to the Fire, Madeline Birmingham and William Connolly describe[16] how each full-time staff member was responsible for supervising two or three associates weekly. While supervision included practical advice about direction, Birmingham and Connolly explain that it “moved a long step beyond” with an emphasis on “dealing with (directors’) own lives, their own prayer, and their own deepest feelings.”[17]

Some of the topics discussed in that chapter include recognizing and responding to God’s presence in the directee’s life, the director’s feelings about what the directee shares, and exploring the director’s expectations of directees, and how a director’s preconceptions of ideas and values can influence and control these reactions. The chapter also describes the use of what the CRD called a “focusing paper” (also known as a “verbatim” or Contemplative Reflection Form), containing a partial description of a conversation with a directee that “raises issues about the quality of his or her work in the particular situation” or focuses on more general issues around the partial description.

The chapter also describes supervision as a collaborative venture with the supervisor helping the director to see blind spots in his or her work with a directee through the lens of the focusing paper. Staff at CRD also practiced a form of group supervision that Barry describes as “a case conference, where one of the associates (in training) presented his or her work with one directee to the whole group, staff and associates, and got feedback on the work.”[18] According to Birmingham and Connolly, an associate had the opportunity to do this two or three times in the nine months of training. [19] Compared to current supervision practices, the process is intriguing because it first involved group supervision with the director’s supervisor present and participating. Later, the director and supervisor processed the group’s observations.

The authors note[20] that the group process supported the director’s growth even as it allowed other participants to learn from the director’s experience. “What they hear expands their horizons, gives color and shape to new possibilities, and gradually helps them become more receptive to the situations that they will encounter.” The process also taught Associates how to talk objectively to their colleagues and get help from them.

The group process enriched the subsequent individual supervision session. While supervisors may point out some difficult part of a director/directee relationship, a director may not comprehend the implications in that session. Then the director may bring a similar situation to their next group supervision and through the group process, the director suddenly understands the point. Or the supervisor may just have missed an important aspect of the relationship that needs to be brought to light in the supervision process. Later in another group session, the supervisor, as only one of many in the group, now can listen with less pressure and perhaps more freedom to the director and perhaps see something new.

CRD encouraged supervision to continue beyond completion of the program but noted that often directors cannot find someone who has both the ability and time for supervision. While they recognized this need for able supervisors, training supervisor’s was never part of CRD’s ministry.

However, though CRD did not develop its own supervision program, its approach to supervising Associates paved the way for supervisor training programs that emerged elsewhere. For example, Janet Ruffing attended[21] a workshop in the late 1970’s sponsored by the Western Association of Spiritual Directors. There, Ann Harvey, at that time one of the supervisors at CRD, gave a workshop on supervision describing the CRD method of group supervision as case presentation and questioning. While Ruffing earned her PhD in Christian Spirituality, she convened a group of spiritual directors to do group supervision using that model.

Ruffing also describes how CRD pressed for post-training supervision that went beyond what others were encouraging at the time. For example, while the Institute for Spirituality and Worship at the Jesuit School of convened spiritual directors monthly for in-service instruction that included “topics” arising in spiritual direction, their process did not include anything close to shared reflection case-work. She also notes that when she began work with others in 1984 at the Mercy Center in California on an internship program in the art of supervision, two or three of the team members had been associated with or trained at CRD. Working closely with them, she learned the CRD process for supervision more deeply, both group and individual supervision allowing directors to learn how to function in a peer group.

Stay tuned for more Milestones in Supervision Training for Spiritual Directors.

Up Next: Mercy Center, Burlingame, CA.

[1] Oral histories for Barry, Connolly, and Doherty can be found at http://www.jesuitoralhistory.org/indexofjesuits.htm

[16] In Chapter 7, full of quotes and specific examples, one can get a very good feel for both the processes used (individual and group) and goals. If you are interested in knowing more about supervision at CRD, this would be an excellent place to start. Although the book is out of print, you can find inexpensive copies for sale at online booksellers.

]]>https://togetherinthemystery.org/blog/milestones-the-center-for-religious-development-1971-2009.html/feed0History of Spiritual Direction Supervisionhttps://togetherinthemystery.org/blog/the-history-of-supervision-for-spiritual-directors.html
https://togetherinthemystery.org/blog/the-history-of-supervision-for-spiritual-directors.html#respondFri, 10 Aug 2012 18:18:47 +0000https://togetherinthemystery.org/?p=813While musing on the discipline of supervising spiritual directors, we at TIM find ourselves yearning for a robust, ongoing dialogue about this topic with supervisors around the world. Even before that, however, we hope that you will help us convert the largely oral history of supervision for spiritual directors into a written one.

For starters, here’s what we wonder:

Who created the first supervision training programs? Where? When?

What were their philosophies and how have these changed over the years?

What are the various supervision models currently in existence?

Have something to share on these topics or others like them? If so, please post a comment that provides your piece of the supervision puzzle. After hearing from you, we hope to weave what you share into an article for Presence that chronicles the written history of supervision for spiritual directors. Thanks!

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Tue, 14 Jun 2011 23:03:24 +0000https://togetherinthemystery.org/?p=1We’ve moved to a new look for our website. We hope you like it!
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